stupid
Americanadjective
-
lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; slow-witted.
-
characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless.
Sorry for asking a stupid question, but why is the answer four instead of five?
-
tediously boring, especially due to lack of meaning or sense; inane; pointless.
He wished he'd never come to such a stupid party.
-
annoying or irritating; troublesome.
Turn off that stupid radio.
-
in a state of stupor; stupefied.
After a twelve-hour work day, she was stupid from fatigue.
noun
adjective
-
lacking in common sense, perception, or normal intelligence
-
(usually postpositive) stunned, dazed, or stupefied
stupid from lack of sleep
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having dull mental responses; slow-witted
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trivial, silly, or frivolous
noun
Usage
What are other ways to say stupid? The adjective stupid describes things characterized or proceeding from mental dullness. Do you know when to use stupid, fatuous, silly, inane, foolish, and asinine? Find out on Thesaurus.com.
Commonly Confused
Stupid, ignorant, and unintelligent are all used to refer to people or things that seem to show a lack of mental resources. Stupid is the most general and most insulting term, and can describe someone lacking in intelligence, wisdom, prudence, or mental quickness. Unintelligent refers to people or things that are lacking in capacity for learning, reasoning, or understanding. Ignorant, by contrast, generally means lacking in knowledge (not necessarily lacking in intelligence).
Synonym Usage
See dull.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of stupid
First recorded in 1535–45; from Latin stupidus, equivalent to stup(ēre) “to be numb, to be stunned” + -idus -id 4 ( def. )
Explanation
A stupid person doesn’t have much intelligence or imagination, and they go through life making decisions that seem to lack all common sense. If you’ve got a brain but you don’t use it, you might be a bit stupid. The word comes from a Latin adjective that means “amazed or stunned,” and stupid people are stunned by everything because their minds are numb. You can make a stupid mistake when you’re not thinking, and you can call someone stupid if you’re feeling cruel, like “Hey, Stupid.” Zombies are stupid because their brains are dead. If that makes sense to you, then you’re not stupid, and you’re also not a zombie. Well done!
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
But no editor in the world could recut something like “Gail Daughtry” into a two-minute preview that accurately conveys just how joyous and stupid this film is.
From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2026
Shockingly, the letter seems to be pushing for a return to standardized tests by, in effect, arguing that a growing percentage of their students are simply too stupid to succeed, no matter what professors do.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 8, 2026
To adapt a line from the political strategist James Carville: It’s the phones, stupid!
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026
Vilimanovic said his season ticket for Fulham FC worked out cheaper per game than a trip to the London Diamond League, which he described as "stupid".
From BBC ● Jul. 6, 2026
It was just stupid little stuff around the house that seemed to take me forever.
From "Firegirl" by Tony Abbott
“I was a bit stupider back then,” he says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 28, 2026
Other news reports more definitively declared that, yes, ChatGPT is becoming stupider.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 2, 2023
Otherwise, the whole room gets stupider and stupider.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 20, 2023
What could he say: I thought up an even stupider conspiracy than yours, and even though I can’t prove it’s true, I’m still afraid it will kill you?
From Slate ● Sep. 24, 2022
It was slow and precise and I felt stupider and more ordinary with every coin I dropped.
From "The Season of Styx Malone" by Kekla Magoon
A cartoon maritime odyssey, powered by what Ricky Wilson called "the stupidest riff you ever heard", it became one of the first independent hits on the American new wave scene, selling more than 20,000 copies.
From BBC ● Mar. 17, 2026
Some pundits might be calling it “the most important chart in the world,” Perkins said, but in reality, it is closer to “the stupidest chart in the world.”
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 6, 2025
That’s “completely bogus,” writes TS Lombard Managing Director Dario Perkins, who calls it “the stupidest chart in the world.”
From Barron's ● Nov. 6, 2025
That is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 27, 2025
One of the cows, either the bravest or the stupidest, took that as a sign of weakness.
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
